


Runaways

by Sholio



Category: Iron Fist (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Age Changes, Drug Abuse, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Kid Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-10
Updated: 2019-09-10
Packaged: 2020-09-02 12:37:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20276035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: Ageswap AU. Ward runs away when he's eight and Danny is twelve. And perhaps that sets the pattern for betrayal, for loyalty, for going away.





	1. Then

**Author's Note:**

  * For [scioscribe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scioscribe/gifts).

Ward runs away when he's eight and Danny is twelve. It's Joy, age six and a half, who tips Danny off before their parents find out about it. She throws herself on him, dribbling tears, and he manages to get the story out of her eventually: Ward swore her to secrecy, she's not supposed to tell, but she's really worried and he's been gone for _hours_ and Dad is going to be mad ...

"I'll find him," Danny promises, giving her a hug and a kiss on top of her pigtails.

His first thought is just to tell a grownup. But it feels like a betrayal of confidence, a violation of the unspoken rules of childhood. The Meachum kids aren't really family, but it feels like it; they've been in each other's lives ever since Joy and Ward were tiny, and because their mom died when they were babies (Danny barely remembers her), the kids have been coming over to the Rand house ever since Danny was younger than Joy is now. This has been a pretty typical rainy Saturday afternoon, with their parents out and Mrs. Bennett, the housekeeper/cook, down in the kitchen and technically in charge of them, but the way it usually works out is that Danny keeps an eye on the little kids. He played Chutes and Ladders with Joy earlier, and then he went to play a video game she wasn't interested in while she watched cartoons, and ... hmmm. He _hasn't_ seen Ward in awhile, come to think of it.

It's pouring down buckets outside. Danny deposits Joy with Mrs. Bennett, down in the warm kitchen, and then goes to get his coat on, the nice one that's waterproof and also warm.

"Where are you going, dear?" 

At twelve, he's allowed to go on errands by himself as long as he doesn't ride the subway. "I'm just taking a walk," he calls back down the hallway, while Joy sits at the counter and swings her feet, and her wide blue eyes beg him not to tell. "Down to the end of the street. I wanted -- I wanted to look at the Halloween decorations. I won't be gone for long."

"Don't catch your death and don't cross the road," Mrs. Bennett calls back, as if he hasn't lived here his whole life and still needs to be told to look out for traffic.

But Danny says politely, "I won't!" because he's supposed to respect Mrs. Bennett like he would respect his parents, and so he tries to.

* * *

Ward picked the worst of all possible days to run away. Of course he did, because Ward is like that. He's been like that ever since he was tiny. He was a cranky baby and he's grown into a pain-in-the-ass grade-schooler who argues with everything Danny says and picks on Joy, pulling her braids and cutting off her dolls' hair.

And yet, as Danny trudges through the puddles in his soaked sneakers and wishes he'd remembered his rain boots, he can't help thinking of the first time he ever saw Ward. He was just a little kid himself then, but he remembers very clearly when his parents took him to meet the Meachums' new baby. He was actually jealous, which makes him smile now, because it's silly for a bigger kid to be jealous of a little one, and anyway it's not like his parents were going to pay more attention to somebody else's baby. But he _was_ a little bit jealous of all the attention the new baby was getting, and also curious. He'd never seen a baby up close before. He had to stand on tiptoes, trying to see, because the baby was being passed around among the adults, over his head. And then his mother crouched down.

"Do you want to hold him?" Mom asked, and she waited seriously for his answer, like Mom always did. Danny nodded, and the next thing he knew, a blanket-wrapped bundle that seemed both too small and too large was being deposited into his arms. Mom and Mrs. Meachum showed Danny how to hold the baby, supporting its head carefully.

"What do you think, darling?" Mrs. Meachum asked.

"It's weird!" Danny said, which made the adults laugh, but it _was_ weird-looking, not really like a baby doll or a baby on TV, almost not like a real thing at all. Baby Ward was kind of reddish and lumpy, with curls of dark hair and a squinty, blank-eyed way of staring at things.

But there was also something incredibly fascinating about holding something so delicate and yet alive. Danny had petted bunnies at the Easter petting zoo and this was kind of similar. He found himself feeling things he'd never felt before, big-brother kind of things. He wasn't even jealous anymore, just fascinated and weirdly, fiercely protective of this stupid little thing with its stupid little face. He curled his body around the new baby, holding him close, and that was when the baby's small-but-surprisingly-hard little fists, waving around, punched him in the nose.

Danny almost dropped him and started crying and one of the adults hastily took the baby away. 

Which, Danny now thinks, had been a pretty typical way for him to meet Ward.

Ward is _difficult,_ as the adults say, meaning bratty. He's stubborn as heck, he picks fights with Danny, he picks on Joy, he never does what he's told, and it just _figures,_ Danny thinks, kicking at a puddle, that Danny has to be out here in the cold autumn rain trying to find the brat when he could be inside playing with his new video game.

He should've just ratted Ward out to the grownups. He really should've.

Ward couldn't possibly have gone too far. On the other hand, he's been gone for hours and he knows the neighborhood pretty well and he's trying to run away and Joy was awfully sure that he was gone for good ...

Danny tries to think where Ward would go if he really was serious about running away, and then he sighs very deeply and reaches into his pocket to feel around for his wallet and spending money.

He is going to be in _so much trouble_ if the adults find out about this.

* * *

Riding the subway by himself is not that big a deal. He knows how it all works, and though he's sort of short for his age, none of the adults look twice at the dripping seventh-grader pushing through the turnstiles. Kids his age ride the subway alone all the time; he's seen them. It's just that his parents are super worried about kidnappers and pickpockets and stuff.

He takes the subway to Grand Central Station, because if he tries to think like a small child who's run away from home, that's what comes to mind as the most likely place. Not even because it would be a good place to get to other places, but because it _sounds_ like it would be.

It's only when he's confronted with a seething swarm of adults, all busily rushing one place or another, that he realizes the futility of trying to find a little kid in all of this. Whenever he's been here before, he was always with adults, either parents or teachers, who were taking charge and making all the decisions.

And then he thinks ... if he was eight years old, even if he was a particularly stubborn and annoying eight-year-old, he would probably be thinking the exact same thing. It's too much. It's confusing and scary. He'd want a place to get away from it all, where he wouldn't be in danger of being run over or stepped on.

And Ward has always liked finding places to curl up in, private or high places. So Danny goes and finds some stairs, and climbs them, and then he finds some other stairs and climbs those, and after he's investigated several different stairs, he finds the one with Ward sitting at the top of it.

Ward is sitting there looking kind of rumpled and damp, the way you do when you've been wet and are now starting to dry in the same clothes. He's wearing his Transformers backpack and wiping at his eyes, and then he sees Danny and just stares at him with a deer-in-the-headlights, oh-no-now-what kind of look.

"Hi," Danny says, plunking down next to him, and puts an arm around him. Ward has always been resistant to being cuddled, but after a moment of tension he just kind of _melts,_ and presses against Danny's side, turning his face into Danny's coat. Danny gets a weird echo of that same feeling he got when he held baby Ward for the first time, the way he'd just wanted to hold him and keep him safe, and also had been kind of jealous and angry with Ward for messing up all his plans. Maybe that's just what dealing with littler kids is like all the time.

"So where you goin'?" Danny asks after hugging him for a little while. Ward pushes him away with an abrupt shove, so okay, typical Ward, and then he rubs at his eyes for a minute and looks away.

"I tried to get a bus ticket," he says after a minute. His voice is thick and unhappy. "They, uh, they wanted to talk to my parents." He punches his knee. "Jerks," he says, and then hits himself again, and again, until Danny catches his hand. It's small and cold.

"Where are your gloves?" Danny wants to know, conveniently ignoring that he forgets his own gloves half the time anyway. But it's okay to forget your own; that just happens. You don't forget the little kids' gloves, is the important thing.

Ward shrugs. "I don't know."

"Maybe it's in your backpack?" Danny asks, unzipping it.

It turns out that what eight-year-olds consider essential running-away supplies include two different GameBoys, a pair of Batman pajamas, a math homework sheet ("It's supposed to be done Friday!"), one of Joy's stuffies, a box of crayons, and a Tupperware container full of gummy worms, but no gloves.

"Do you have anything dry in here?" Danny finds a T-shirt, but he can't really think how to get Ward to change into it in the middle of Grand Central Station. "You're all wet."

"I'm not cold," Ward says promptly, proving that he definitely is cold.

Danny takes off his warm raincoat and puts it around Ward's shoulders, and then hugs him again, because Ward looks like he needs one. "So you wanna tell me where you're going?"

"Canada," Ward says right away.

"Um." Danny is not entirely clear on the details of crossing international borders, but he's pretty sure that you need a) an adult, and b) a passport. "Why?"

"I don't know," Ward says, and sniffles. "I just don't want to be home anymore."

"What about Joy? She's going to miss you."

Ward shakes his head and then he really starts crying, and Danny, horrified, just hugs him and hopes that no grown-ups stop to ask what's going on and, worse, call his parents. But at the same time, he finds himself vaguely wishing that one of them actually would, because this is the kind of situation that _really_ cries out for an adult.

But no adults come, and Ward eventually cries himself out, clinging to Danny, who nervously pats Ward's damp hair. It's cut short and swept back because Ward's dad greases his hair into place and makes it look like a grown-up's, with the side-part and everything, but now it's kind of a messed-up wad of wet, semi-greased spikes. 

"It's not that bad," Danny says anxiously, because adults generally say things like that.

"I can't go home," Ward snivels into a fold of Danny's coat.

"Sure you can," Danny tries, and then, because he can't really think of anything else to make Ward stop crying, "Nobody knows. Nobody except Joy and me. She told me but nobody else."

He really hopes that's still true. To his amazement, it _does_ actually make Ward stop crying. Ward swipes at his blotchy face and looks up with wet eyelashes and an expression that is made out of pure trust. "Really?"

"Really," Danny says, and he's already deciding in some back part of his brain that if anyone asks about this little adventure, he's going to tell them that it was his idea and take full responsibility, even though he's never lied to an adult in his life, at least not about anything serious.

But no one _does_ ask. He takes Ward home on the subway, paying for both of them, and Ward droops on him for the ride like he's run out of energy, and walks home with surprising docility, clinging to Danny's hand. Inside the front door, Danny is helping Ward get out of Danny's coat and then his own damp one, when Joy comes running down the hallway and flings her arms around Ward.

"I'm sorry!" she wails. "I told Danny and I wasn't supposed to but --"

Danny shushes them both, hopefully before anyone can hear. "Are Mom and Dad home yet?"

Joy shakes her head. "We made cookies. Ward, do you want a cookie?"

"Ward needs dry clothes first, before anyone sees," Danny says, and Joy nods very seriously and goes off to the kitchen, hopefully to get more cookies and not say anything to Mrs. Bennett, while Danny sneaks Ward up the back stairs.

It's when Danny's helping Ward get changed in his own room that he sees the bruises. They're on Ward's shoulder, clear purple finger-shaped outlines on both sides of his shoulder, like someone with adult-sized hands grabbed and squeezed.

"What happened?" Danny asks, helping Ward into his dry T-shirt.

"I don't know," Ward says, and Danny doesn't ask any more questions. Not then. He's twelve years old and he got Ward back, that's the important thing; every kid wants to run away sometimes, Danny himself made detailed plans for it when he was just a little younger than Ward is now. And then they go downstairs and have cookies in the kitchen, and Ward sits very close to Danny and leans against him until their parents come home.

And then it's time for the Meachum kids to go, and Ward grabs his backpack and Joy gets hers, and at the door while Ward and Joy's dad is helping Joy put her coat on, Ward gives one last look over his shoulder at Danny. A weird look, almost scared, almost desperate.

Danny doesn't think about any of that very much, then.

* * *

(But he thinks about it later, in K'un Lun. He thinks about it a lot.)


	2. Now

The years fall away like calendar pages, like leaves from an autumn tree, and Danny is standing in the office that used to be Harold's and looking at a grown-up Ward and Joy. He knows, intellectually, that twelve years have gone by. When he hugged them goodbye and promised to bring them back presents from China, Ward was eleven and Joy was nine.

And now they're grown. They're taller than him. Joy is slender and graceful as a willow tree. Ward is dressed exactly like a copy of his father. And they're both staring at him, Joy in disbelief, Ward with a look of absolute loathing.

* * *

It's a few days and a few attempts on his life later before Danny actually manages to have a conversation with Ward about it. Sort of. He corners Ward in a restaurant. It might be easier if Joy was here; she's been ... not mediating between them, exactly, but helping to smooth things over. But she's not; she's at her law classes at Columbia.

"Come on, Ward, you aren't like this, you _weren't_ like this ..." But Ward was also a little kid. People grow up. People change.

"You're not Danny Rand," Ward snarls at him across the table. "Danny Rand is dead."

"You _know_ me. I saw it on your face." He was fifteen when he left, and he hasn't changed as much as they have. "Look, Ward, I don't want to take the company away from you. I just want a share of what my parents built. It's _ours_, and --"

Ward jumps to his feet, a violent motion that scatters water glasses and decorative flowers. "There is no _us,"_ and he's _shaking_ now, white with rage. "Danny Rand is dead, he left, _you_ left, and I will burn this company to ashes before I let you have a single penny of it."

He reaches a shaking hand down to brush at the water soaking into the tails of his jacket, his entire body vibrating with his obvious effort to control himself. Turning on his heel, he strides out of the restaurant, shoving anyone out of his way who is unwise enough to cross his path. And Danny can only stare after him -- shaking, himself, with reaction. He's not even angry; all he can think is, _What were those years like for you?_

Harold died when Ward was fifteen and Joy thirteen; this much he knows. He's gathered from Joy that they had a court-appointed guardian until Ward took the reins of the company at eighteen. But now Danny thinks that he only has disconnected pieces of the puzzle, an edge piece here, a bit of lake, a cat's eye. And no one will _tell_ him anything; all he has to work with is fragments. The only person who's been honest with him since he got back is Jeri, but she's also the only one who has no stake in this, and nothing to lose ...

"Sir?" A waiter arrives at his elbow. "There is, uh -- the small matter of the bill --"

"Yeah," Danny says, and absently throws a handful of Jeri's money onto the table.

* * *

So Harold is alive. 

And he's all warmth, all welcome -- all the things Danny came back to New York hoping to find, and never got.

And even as Harold hugs him, all Danny can think of is Ward's face in the restaurant, and now, the way that Ward stands apart from the two of them, his face still: too self-possessed by far for age twenty-three.

There's an explanation about the Hand and Joy and Danny's purpose that slides past Danny for the most part because _of course_ he's here to hunt the Hand, that goes without saying. But what he really wants is to understand Ward and Harold. More pieces of the puzzle are falling into his lap, and a picture is starting to take shape, and he doesn't know what to make out of it.

_Harold "died" when Ward was fifteen._

_Bruises in the shape of a hand, exactly as far apart as an adult man's fingers._

_He left. You left!_

Ward walks him out. His face is still and cold, with that newfound icy calm that Danny doesn't quite know how to deal with. Ward was a volatile kid, and now he's a cold, collected adult with occasional explosions of bitter anger, and that's another piece that clicks into place in a shape Danny still can't quite see.

"I guess you got what you wanted," Ward says in the elevator, staring at the wall. 

"I ... guess?" It's true, but Danny is still trying to understand. This doesn't feel like victory. He learned that feeling in K'un Lun, but he also learned the hollow emptiness of a victory-that-isn't. Like taking the Iron Fist when Davos, perhaps, was the one who had earned it. And this feels more like that.

"The company and everything else." And as the elevator doors open, Ward gives him a strange smile. "I hope you enjoy it."

"Ward!" Danny says, because there is a sudden sharp flash of memory, cutting like a knife -- a boy who apprenticed with him, who struggled with the expectations heaped on all of them by the K'un Lun elders -- a boy who was eventually dragged out of the river, and Danny was not nearly young enough to be put off by the adults' whispers or to fail to understand what had happened --

That boy's face, every time he failed to meet their teachers' expectations, every time he visibly withered under the gentle disappointment of Lei-Kung and the other teachers ... had looked very much like Ward's does now.

Ward only turns a shoulder to him, shrugging off Danny's hand. "We have a press conference to prepare for. Hope you packed a suit."

* * *

Victory is ...

Victory is a corner office at Rand, with his dad's old desk in it. Danny spends one entire afternoon sitting underneath it, running his fingers across the old stickers and basking in a quiet meditative sense of peace, feeling his parents closer to him than he has in twelve years.

Victory is circling around the Hand, getting closer and closer to unmasking them once and for all. Victory is finding ways to chase away some of the shadows underneath Colleen's smile, and getting a little closer to understanding what makes her sad when she could be happy instead.

Victory is an apartment belonging to Jeri Hogarth, that he doesn't precisely _like,_ in fact he kind of hates it, vast soulless place that it is. (The energy flow is unharmonious, the orientation and construction inauspicious.) But he keeps because it's almost halfway familiar, and right now he'll take anything that's even a little bit familiar in an ocean of uncertainty.

Victory is working with Ward and Joy. Joy is almost never there, and Ward is hostile and abrupt, but Danny really wants to get to know them -- these strangers, wearing the names and carrying the baggage of his childhood friends. They are all he has left of his old family, and the new connections he's beginning to cultivate are still tentative and raw.

So he tries. He goes out with Colleen at night to try to unravel the puzzle of what the Hand is up to, and he works long hours at Rand, and he feels worn to the bone, still wearing the bruises of last night's fights as he tries to understand corporate theory and works hard to let Ward's tirades roll over him when he has, apparently, made some brand-new blunder that's going to ruin the company. He doesn't know what to make of the people that Ward and Joy has turned into, Joy distant and cool, Ward angry and only concerned with money and the company's image.

But somewhere underneath, they're still the little kids they used to be, the ones that snuggled up with Danny to watch cartoons while their parents were out, the ones whose fears he hugged away and whose childish confidences he listened to. And so Danny holds onto Joy's smiles and tells himself that there's some way to get through to Ward, too, as little as he sees of Ward and much time as Ward still spends in confidence with Harold --

\-- and there's _something there,_ something he's almost beginning to get at --

* * *

"Ward?"

It's raining hard outside, streaking the window of the next-door conference room as Danny taps on Ward's office door. The stripe of dim light underneath lets him know that the office is occupied; he's not the only one who's working late.

"Ward? Hey. I just need to let you know I'm heading out for the night and I need the code to the door downstairs so I don't set off the alarm again --"

He hesitates as the door swings open on an apparently unoccupied office. Danny glances over his shoulder at the empty outer office, the lights turned down over Megan's desk. "Ward?" he says one more time, and then slips inside. Maybe, if Ward isn't here, the code is written down on a sticky note or something ...

Ward's desk is uncharacteristically messy. Danny starts to poke at it and realizes that at least some of the detritus is not just papers but also prescription bottles and empty glasses. There's a sharp scent of alcohol. Danny picks up an empty bottle and puts it down.

"Ward, are you here?"

Something moves in the corner.

The room is lit only by the desk lamp and the intermittent strobe of lightning outside. Ward -- and it's definitely Ward -- is curled up on the couch, a flash of white shirt and tousled dark hair. Danny crouches beside him. He can smell the alcohol from here.

His first thought is _call Joy_ \-- she might be able to tell him what to do; she might have dealt with this before .. but no, that's not fair. She's the youngest of them all; she deserves to have her time at Columbia.

Instead he shakes Ward's shoulder, and keeps shaking until Ward reluctantly stirs and rolls his head to the side. "Oh," he slurs, "_you,"_ and rolls back to face the wall.

"Ward ... c'mon, Ward ..." Danny gets him sitting up, while Ward complains in incoherent mumbles. All Danny really has to go off here is a vague childhood recollection of watching a Lifetime movie with his mom in which a cheerleader took a pill overdose and her friends walked her around all night and she was eventually fine. So not letting him sleep is a good strategy, right?

"Hate you," Ward mumbles, as Danny tries to get him on his feet.

"I know, I figured that out." The thing making this incredibly awkward -- well, one thing, anyway -- is that Ward is taller than Danny, though perhaps not as heavy as he should be; he feels too skinny. Danny thinks perhaps he should turn some of his attention to making sure Ward is eating a healthy diet and exercising -- maybe he could sign up for one of Colleen's beginner classes ... but all of that is dependent on making Ward get up and not fall asleep right now.

"Jesus, Danny, _what_ do you _want,"_ Ward groans. and then his legs just fold up, and he goes down in a heap and drags Danny down with him. On the floor, Ward starts laughing helplessly and Danny just kind of hugs him, not really knowing what else to do, feeling the sharp bars of his ribs and his intermittent hitching laughter that's too close to sobs.

"Why did you do this?" Danny asks, not really thinking he'll get a response, but he can't help thinking of the first friend he made here in New York, his homeless friend who died in the park with a needle in his arm. This world is _messed up,_ sometimes.

"You know why," Ward says cryptically, and then he jerks and tries to sit up. "Where are we? He's watching. Always watching. I can't -- I can't!"

He jerks away from Danny, retreating until his back slams into the couch, and then covers his head with his arms. It's terrifying to watch, like a young child trying to protect himself.

"Hey ... hey." Danny creeps toward him, hand out. He's glad he didn't call Joy. She doesn't need to see this. Danny is frightened enough himself. "Ward, it's okay, look -- I don't know what you took, but do we need to call somebody, do you need any help -- Ward --"

Ward bats Danny's hand away with clumsy swipes. "You went away. You _left me."_

"I know," Danny says helplessly. "I didn't mean to. I'm sorry."

Ward is shaking, curled in on himself. Danny reaches out to him and there's a hesitating moment and then -- it's like the years fall away and they're just a couple of kids with no adults around. Danny pulls Ward against his shoulder, Ward fists his hands in Danny's shirt and presses his face into Danny's neck and doesn't say anything, just breathes shakily, in and out. And all the things that are scaring Danny -- all the things he almost knows -- press close around him, 

"I'm going to fix this," Danny says. He's not sure what makes him say it. He rubs his hand up and down Ward's back and just knows that he has to, it's his _job_ to fix it, he can't _not._ Just like when they were kids, when these two little kids -- somebody else's kids -- were dropped into his life and the adults told him he needed to take care of them and still ...

... still, more than twenty years later, he's taking care of them. Because they're his little brother and sister, in all the ways that count, and he can't _not._

He turns his face into Ward's sweat-damp, vaguely boozy-smelling hair and just wishes he _could_ fix it, wishes he knew what was wrong, or what to do.

Because there is a _lot_ wrong here. There's a stink of corruption at Rand, an underlying smell of decay. The Hand has a hold on the company, and Danny really doesn't think it was Ward or Joy who let that happen.

Which leaves one option.

But just as he's finally managing to get that image to take shape, Ward jerks against him and pushes him away and mumbles, "I don't feel good. I think I'm gonna be sick."

"Okay -- um, yeah, okay --" Danny scrambles for a wastebasket and shoves it into his hands, and then goes to the attached bathroom and brings back some wet paper towels.

Ward slumps back against the couch and shakily takes the paper towels and wipes at his face. When Danny helps him stand up, Ward comes with him this time, limp and pliant. 

"So, you want to go somewhere that's not your office? Home?" It occurs to Danny that he's not entirely sure where Ward's home is. The townhouse with Joy? Somewhere else? Ward is swaying against him, and Danny can't leave him alone tonight, it's not right. "I have a stupidly big and expensive spare bedroom you can sleep in," he offers, and Ward gives a small miserable laugh, and lets Danny lead his weaving steps toward the door.

In the doorway, Ward stops suddenly by ramming a shoulder against the doorframe, and with one hand still gripping Danny's shirt, he turns back to face the dim room. "Fuck," he declares definitively, "you," and he flips the bird to the office.

"Hey," Danny says, a little bit scared all over again, and guides him away from the office, into the elevator.

"You left," Ward says in the elevator, leaning against him, shivering now, Danny half-holding him up.

"I know."

* * *

In the apartment Jeri is paying for, Danny gets some water and aspirin into Ward, and then gets him settled in the too-big, too-plush spare bed. (Danny still hasn't managed to get used to that; he's still sleeping on a sheet spread out in front of the window.)

Ward seems to fall asleep immediately. Danny sits for awhile on the floor, his back against the bed. Ward's breathing and color seems to be better, so Danny is no longer quite so afraid that Ward's going to have some kind of seizure or quit breathing in the night.

He just doesn't want to leave him alone.

Again.

The last time, he left for twelve years, and nothing can ever fix that.

He leans his head against the side of the bed, the back of his head resting lightly against Ward's arm. "I guess it doesn't help to say that I didn't mean to," he says quietly, knowing Ward can't hear him. "I didn't _want_ to. I was going to bring you and Joy back a ton of stupid souvenirs, just like every time I went anywhere."

_And then I didn't come back for twelve years._

_And life hurt you._

_Both of you._

He closes his eyes, and feels Ward twitch against him, and stir, rolling over. He's pretty sure Ward is completely out of it, but one hand brushes lightly against his hair, then just rests against it.

_I'm sorry. But I'm going to do better._

And he's still there in the morning, because that's what big brothers do.


End file.
